On The Project Management of Investigative Journalism

[danieldwilliam]

I am genuinely curious about what is actually driving the timing of the news reports about Russell Brand.

I very definitely do not mean, what Establishment Secrets or Deep Truth was Brand about to reveal that meant that he needed to be silenced.

I mean, what’s been the project plan for the investigative journalism, the investigation and research, interviews, verification, editorial and legal review. How does that all work. Why has the story broken this weekend and not a weekend last spring or next spring?

Comments

[andrewducker]

I suspect that the number of people willing to talk about it hit a critical mass. With one or two you know people will dismiss it. If you can tell your witnesses that you already have 3 people who are going to stand up then it makes #4 more likely to do so because they know they are less likely to be dismissed.

So it's probably fairly random timing based around when enough have gathered together in the one place.

Also, Brand is no longer the mainstream chap with the support of the media he once was. He's now a conspiracy idiot ranting about vaccination on YouTube. So it may have reached this point a few times before, but not with the impetus to get past that barrier.

[cmcmck]

One of the women who is accusing him went to the media with her story so it may be as simple as that.

[mountainkiss]

I think the bottom line is “they publish when their lawyers let them”. So then the interesting q becomes “what would be the tipping point for the lawyers?”

Starting guess: (1) number of accusers (2) level of detail and consistency in accounts making them more unassailable in the face of legal challenge (3) nature of correspondence between accusers and Brand, and how reliably this can be proven to have originated from him (4) possibly supporting evidence eg cab firm records, gifts, testimony from friends including correspondence from the time, contemporaneous medical evidence (5) other things I haven’t thought of. So then the role of the investigative team is to maximise the volume and quality of each until such time as the lawyers deem the risk acceptable. This is a completely invented answer and could be wrong in every respect.